The shutdown highlights a broken system
To the Point
KCRW
4.4 • 583 Ratings
🗓️ 25 January 2018
⏱️ 59 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
“To the Point” goes beyond the current blame game and explains the political calculations behind government shutdowns. You need to know, because the next one may be just weeks away. You’ll get the history of a self-defeating strategy the mainstream media don’t have time to tell you. On our Talking Point: the continuing Trump Campaign wears out the best of reporters.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello again, I'm Warren Alney. |
| 0:04.9 | Today we're talking about the latest government shutdown. |
| 0:07.6 | It is over, at least for the moment, and we're not talking about the blame game. |
| 0:13.3 | We want to go deeper into the history of American government shutdowns back to 1981. |
| 0:18.5 | How the White House and Congress can get away with a practice that would lead to new |
| 0:23.1 | elections in other countries. |
| 0:25.6 | Let me just begin with a cartoon that I have pasted on my refrigerator door. |
| 0:30.4 | It's non-sequitur by Wiley Miller, and it shows people carrying a sign, and the sign says, |
| 0:37.1 | government for the people who hate government, and the sign says, government for the people |
| 0:38.3 | who hate government, by the people who hate to govern. |
| 0:43.1 | Norm Ornstein, let me introduce you first, resident congressional scholar at the American |
| 0:46.7 | Ender Tobias Institute, author of yet another book, One Nation After Trump, a Guide for |
| 0:52.8 | the Perplexed, the Desperate, the Disillusioned, and |
| 0:55.9 | the Not Yet Deported. |
| 0:57.4 | Great to have you on our program. |
| 0:58.7 | It's always great to be with you, Warren. |
| 1:00.4 | So what about the idea that we have government for people who don't like a government |
| 1:06.1 | by people who hate to govern? |
| 1:09.0 | I'm afraid there's an awful lot of truth to that. |
| 1:11.5 | And what we've seen over the period from the late 1970s, really up through the present |
| 1:21.7 | moment, is multiple times when those who wanted to spend less confronted those who had a different set of priorities |
| 1:33.5 | and with a very different process for dealing with budgets and government spending than |
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